Apple’s second quarter earnings exceeded analyst estimates despite the fact that many thought Cupertino would come up short. The company reported earnings of $9.5 billion on sales of $43.6 billion, topping Apple’s own expectations of $41 billion to $43 billion.
Cupertino sold 37.4 million iPhones and 19.5 million iPads during the quarter, besting estimates of 34 million units and 18 million to 19 million units, respectively. Consumers snapped up 5.6 million iPods and just south of 4 million Macs, we’re told.
A year ago, Apple earned $11.6 billion in profit on sales of just $39.2 billion. The drop in profit year-over-year is the first in a decade and represents an 18 percent drop from a year ago. The last time there was a yearly decline was in early 2003 when Apple was struck by an economic downturn as well as an ongoing restructuring effort.
But despite the lower profit, CEO Tim Cook said the company was pleased to report record March revenue thanks to continued strong performance from the iPhone and iPad. He noted that fiscal 2012 results were incredibly strong, led by higher gross margins, better strength in the dollar and lower component costs.
Looking forward, Cook said the Apple team is hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services. When pressed on the issue, he said they had some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014.
That said, perhaps we won’t see a new iPhone this summer after all.
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